Salient to Investors: The smallest US current-account deficit since 1999 shows the US is a lesser supporter of global growth than in the past. Exploration and production are adding to growth, reducing spending on imported energy, cheaper fuel and raw materials are boosting manufacturing, making the US more of a
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Richard Koo at Nomura said: Mini-bubbles can occur during a balance sheet recession, like this one. Not yet seeing a big bubble, but concerned about mini bubbles. In a monetary policy-driven market, money created by an accommodative central bank typically spreads throughout the economy and lifts markets. During
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ellen Zentner at Morgan Stanley said: The Fed’s near-zero interest rate and QE is holding down US bond rates, meaning the US Treasury yield curve would struggle to invert, crimping its effectiveness as an indicator of business cycles. Yield curve inversion signals investors are betting on weaker
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: New marketing research shows how we shop has as much to do with our mental state as with our material needs. People spend because they are sad or are feeling guilty or insecure. Martin Lindstrom says there is a direct correlation between lack of self-esteem and the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ken Fisher at Fisher Investments said: Ending QE would be the most bullish thing we can do because it is not a stimulus – it flattens the yield curve and slows things down. We are doing well despite QE, not because of it. Historically, a steeper yield
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham at BMO writes: The Greenspan-Bernanke policy of excessive stimulus, now administered by Yellen, will continue, and that the path of least resistance, for the market is up. It would take a severe economic shock to outweigh the effect of the Fed’s relentless pumping of the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: College lectures join a growing pool of web-based goods and services being given away that are transforming the lives of consumers. Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT said GDP only tracks things people buy so underestimates the very promising progress made by the US economy in virtual goods, so
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The poor and the wealthy respond differently to austerity and stimulus. Rich people plan for the future, save during a stimulus, thinking about the taxes to come, and can borrow during a fiscal contraction. Economists in the 1970s and 1980s erroneously assumed that people were rational and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett said: Congress will resolve the US debt ceiling stalemate before it seriously harms the country. One second beyond the debt limit would not do us in, but if it goes a year beyond, that would be unbelievable. US government bonds carry ‘the full faith and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: John C. Bluedorn, Joerg Decressin and Marco E. Terrones at the IMF said: Slumping asset prices show a recession is probably on its way for the G-7 economies as declining asset prices are significantly associated with the beginning of an economic contraction. From 1970 to 2011, stocks
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